constituent assembly (10th of February 1849). The new insurrection that now broke out was a more formidable affair than the first. A military mutiny at Rastatt on the 11th of May showed that the army sympathized with the revolution, which was proclaimed two days later at Offenburg amid tumultuous scenes. On the same day (13th of May) a mutiny at Karlsruhe forced the grand-duke to take to flight, and the next day he was followed by the ministers, while a committee of the diet under Lorenz Brentano (1813–1891), who represented the more moderate Radicals as against the republicans, established itself in the capital to attempt to direct affairs pending the establishment of a provisional government. This was accomplished on the 1st of June, and on the 10th the “constituent diet,” consisting entirely of the most “advanced” politicians, assembled. It had little chance of doing more than make speeches; the country was in the hands of an armed mob of civilians and mutinous soldiers; and, meanwhile, the grand-duke of Baden had joined with Bavaria in requesting the armed intervention of Prussia, which was granted on the condition that Baden should join the League of the Three Kings.
From this moment the revolution in Baden was doomed, and with it the revolution in all Germany. The Prussians, under Prince William (afterwards emperor), invaded Baden in the middle of June. The insurgent forces were under the command of the Pole, Ludwig von Mieroslawski (1814–1878), who reduced them to some semblance of order. On the 20th he met the Prussians at Waghäusel, and was completely defeated; on the 25th Prince William entered Karlsruhe; and at the end of the month the members of the provisional government, who had taken refuge at Freiburg, dispersed. Such of the insurgent leaders as were caught, notably the ex-officers, suffered military execution; the army was dispersed among Prussian garrison towns; and Baden was occupied for the time by Prussian troops. The grand-duke returned on the 19th of August, and at once dissolved the diet. The elections resulted in a majority favourable to the new ministry, and a series of laws were passed of a reactionary tendency with a view to strengthening the government.
The grand-duke Leopold died on the 24th of April 1852, and was succeeded by his second son, Frederick, as regent, the eldest, Louis (d. 22nd of January 1858), being incapable of ruling.[1] The internal affairs of Baden during the period that followed have comparatively little general interest. In the greater politics of Germany, Baden, between 1850 and 1866, was a consistent supporter of Austria; and in the war of 1866 her contingents, under Prince William, had two sharp engagements with the Prussian army of the Main. Two days before the affair of Werbach (24th of July), however, the second chamber had petitioned the grand-duke to end the war and enter into an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia. The grand-duke had from the first been opposed to the war with Prussia, but had been forced to yield owing to popular resentment at the policy of Prussia in the Schleswig-Holstein question (q.v.). The ministry, now at one, resigned; Baden announced her withdrawal from the German confederation; and on the 17th of August a treaty of peace and alliance was signed with Prussia. The adhesion of Baden to the North German confederation was prevented by Bismarck himself, who had no wish to give Napoleon III. so good an excuse for intervention; but it was the opposition of Baden to the formation of a South German confederation that made the ultimate union inevitable. The troops of Baden took a conspicuous share in the war of 1870; and it was the grand-duke of Baden, who, in the historic assembly of the German princes at Versailles, was the first to hail the king of Prussia as German emperor.
The internal politics of Baden, both before and after 1870, centre in the main round the question of religion. The signing on the 28th of June 1859 of a concordat with the Holy See, by which education was placed under the oversight of the clergy and the establishment of religious orders was facilitated, led to a constitutional struggle, which ended in 1863 with the victory of Liberal principles, the communes being made responsible for education, though the priests were admitted to a share in the management. The quarrel between Liberalism and Clericalism was, however, not ended. In 1867, on the accession to the premiership of Julius von Jolly (1823–1891), several constitutional changes in a Liberal direction were made; responsibility of ministers, freedom of the press, compulsory education. In the same year (6th of September) a law was passed to compel all candidates for the priesthood to pass the government examinations. The archbishop of Freiburg resisted, and, on his death in April 1868, the see was left vacant, In 1869 the introduction of civil marriage did not tend to allay the strife, which reached its climax after the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility in 1870. The “Kulturkampf” raged in Baden, as in the rest of Germany; and here as elsewhere the government encouraged the formation of Old Catholic communities. Not till 1880, after the fall of the ministry of Jolly, was a reconciliation with Rome effected; in 1882 the archbishopric of Freiburg was again filled up. The political tendency of Baden, meanwhile, mirrored that of all Germany. In 1891 the National Liberals had but a majority of one in the diet; from 1893 they could maintain themselves only with the aid of the Conservatives; and in 1897 a coalition of Ultramontanes, Socialists, Social-democrats and Radicals (Freisinnige), won a majority for the opposition in the chamber.
Amid all these contests the wise and statesmanlike moderation of the grand-duke Frederick won him universal esteem. By the treaty under which Baden had become an integral part of the German empire, he had reserved only the exclusive right to tax beer and spirits; the army, the post-office, railways and the conduct of foreign relations were placed under the effective control of Prussia. In his relations with the German empire, too, Frederick proved himself rather a great German noble than a sovereign prince actuated by particularist ambitions; and his position as husband of the emperor William I.’s only daughter, Louise (whom he had married in 1856), gave him a peculiar influence in the councils of Berlin. When, on the 20th of September 1906, the grand-duke celebrated at once the jubilee of his reign and his golden wedding, all Europe combined to do him honour. King Edward VII. sent him, by the hands of the duke of Connaught, the order of the Garter. But more significant, perhaps, was the tribute paid by the Temps, the leading Parisian paper. “Nothing more clearly demonstrates the sterile paradox of the Napoleonic work,” it wrote, “than the history of the grand-duchy. It was Napoleon, and he alone, who created this whole state in 1803 to reward in the person of the little margrave of Baden a relative of the emperor of Russia. It was he who after Austerlitz aggrandized the margravate at the expense of Austria; transformed it into a sovereign principality and raised it to a grand-duchy. It was he too who, by the secularization on the one hand and by the dismemberment of Württemberg on the other, gave the grand-duke 500,000 new subjects. He believed that the recognition of the prince and the artificial ethnical formation of the principality would be pledges of security for France. But in 1813 Baden joined the coalition, and since then that nation created of odds and ends (de bric et de broc) and always handsomely treated by us, had not ceased to take a leading part in the struggles against our country. The grand-duke Frederick, grand-duke by the will of Napoleon, has done France all the harm he could. But French opinion itself renders justice to the probity of his character and to the ardour of his patriotism, and nobody will feel surprise at the homage with which Germany feels bound to surround his old age.” He died at Mainau on the 28th of September 1907, and was succeeded by his son, the grand-duke Frederick II.
- ↑ Frederick assumed the title of grand-duke on the 5th of September 1856.
